By Madina Toure
Some 40 southeast Queens residents learned about everything from the history of voting rights to voting trends in the borough at a voter education forum sponsored by state Sen. James Sanders (D-South Ozone Park).
The forum, held at Calvary Baptist Church in Jamaica May 26, featured presentations and a panel discussion with Steven Romalewski, director of CUNY Mapping Service; Carmen Dixon, educator and organizer for the New York City Chapter of Black Lives Matter; Michael Higgins, Jr., organizer for Families United for Racial and Economic Equality; and Lurie Daniel Favors, general counsel for the Center for Law and Social Justice.
In an interview with TimesLedger, Sanders said he wants his district, which includes Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park, and South Jamaica, to be the starting point of a national conversation about getting people more involved in the democratic process.
“Let this district become known as the most thought-provoking thinking district that we have in New York City,” he said. “I’m prepared to accept a challenge, of course, that no one is fully worthy of, of standing up for democracy. And I believe this will re-engage the people.”
Chiedu Uzoigwe, Sanders’ constituent liaison for South Jamaica, who led and represented him at the forum, echoed similar sentiments.
“We want to re-engage the subject of voting and why it is so important and why we are not doing enough to make sure that everyone is given the equal right to vote,” Uzoigwe said.
Romalewski, who showed maps featuring voter patterns, said most New Yorkers are Democrats and noted that registered Republicans are mainly concentrated in Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and parts of Queens, though not in southeast Queens.
“Registration patterns and voting patterns also tend to always follow predominantly race and ethnicity patterns,” he said.
Dixon emphasized the importance of other types of civic engagement, arguing that not everyone who votes is part of the democratic process.
“We are not in a democracy,” she said. “We are in an oligarchy.”
Favors said that in the 200 years before African-American people gained the right to vote, the system has been crafted in a way that excludes them.
“It was intentionally designed so we would never get the right to vote,” she said.
Higgins chronicled the history of voting rights, including the colonial era when only Caucasian men who owned property, including slaves, could vote, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and present-day issues, such as voter suppression laws throughout the South.
Guest panelist Onida Coward Mayers, director of voter assistance with NYC Votes, a program of the city Campaign Finance Board, discussed the agency’s Voter Day program where they take members of the public to Albany to speak to legislators.
Rosedale resident Dr. Linda Guillebeaux, 50, yelled during the Q&A session about the 126,000 voters taken off the rolls in the April 19 New York primary.
“I’m appalled,” Guillebeaux exclaimed. “That was criminal.” St. Albans resident Samantha Brown Menjivar, 40, whose 5-year-old son attends PS 360, said students should be learning about voting and civic engagement in school.
“In my opinion, it’s a matter of us as a community to build those grassroots from (the age of) 5 and 6,” Menjivar said.
(Chiedu Uzoigwe is Sanders’ constituent liaison for South Jamaica, not his chief of staff, and Sanders’ district does not include Cambria Heights.)
Reach reporter Madina Toure by e-mail at mtour
